‘An American businessman was at the pier of a small coastal Mexican village when a small boat with just one fisherman docked. Inside the small boat were several large yellowfin tuna. The American complimented the fisherman on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them. The fisherman replied that it only took a little while. The American then asked why didn’t he stay out longer and catch more fish. The fisherman said he had enough to support his family’s immediate needs.

The American then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?”

The fisherman said, “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take siesta with my wife Maria, stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life, señor.”

The American scoffed. “I am a Wharton MBA and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds, buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several boats. Eventually you would have a fleet of fishing boats. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village and move to Mexico City, then LA and eventually NYC where you will run your expanding enterprise.”

The fisherman asked, “But how long will this all take?”

To which the American replied, “Fifteen or twenty years.”

“But what then?”

The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions? Then what?”

The American said, “Then you would retire. Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take siesta with your wife, stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends.”’

The part about the laughter at his m-i-l’s suicide . . . that they would have no concept of people being in emotional anguish also says something about their own simple joy to be alive. Really must have thrown that guy for a loop.

I admit, I giggled when he said that the people laughed at his step mother’s suicide. And trust me, I’m not one to laugh at such a thing. The idea of living in the present has been a goal of mine for a long time, especially since deconverting. I still find it difficult to do so because of my oppressive religious past. I’m about at the one year mark of my weekly therapy sessions. Yesterday was an EMDR session and I was surprised of the direction it took me. I reflected upon being five to six years old on an incident where I thought my shit hippy, Pentecostal, Charismatic father was literally going to kill me. Long story, but my body was in pain, and I was fucking scared for my life. When I listen to the video I couldn’t help but think of how fortunate those people are to live a life without the fear, guilt and dominance of religion. How amazing that would be. And people think that indigenous people are the superstitious ones. Please, they could teach us westerners quite a bit!

It’s not easy, but it is happening. Although I’ve never experienced sexual abuse (and I’ve never been Catholic), watching The Keepers on Netflix was incredibly helpful to me. One lady in particular said something that really made me feel comforted. It wasn’t what she said that was good, it’s just she gave me the words as to why I went from church to church. I related to her upon her reflection. I, too, thought that my many trials at countless churches was god’s way of chastening me because he loved me. I thought he was shaking out the dross in my life and making me a better person. It wasn’t Stockholm Syndrome as to why I stayed. It was because I thought god was using spiritual leaders and fellow congregants to make me a better person. I longed to be a good person, faithful and true to the very end, regardless of the cost. Character was everything to me. (Now, it was Stockholm Syndrome as to why I empathized and stuck it out with my parents for so long.)

There’s is still a complicated world though. For example, the women go into the water to have their babies . . . alone. If the baby is not coming out, no one helps her. Both mother and baby die in childbirth while mother is standing alone in the water. They do not attempt to help.

They also believe in and see ghosts/spirits. Daniel witnessed them seeing these things but he himself could not see them.

That’s scary about childbirth! Personally, I find having a baby to be a bit of a lonely experience as it is. I can’t imagine how much more alone those poor women must have felt. That’s so sad and it seems so cruel to me.

20 years to come out, to live a lie. And the destruction of his family unit when he does. Religion? What’s the harm?
Religion is just full of benefit, I am assured by every kind of faitheist, and only those extremists and those ‘doin’ it rong’ are guilty of making it pernicious.

I am having serious difficulty communicating this to a chap named Jon over on Nate Owen’s blog who, although not Christian, seems to want to somehow excuse the religion on the worn out grounds that all Christians are not bad – ”jerks” – working at soup kitchens, donating clothes food etc , and other charity work.
Why is it people are unable to understand that doing anything that has any sort of religious motivation is intrinsically bad because the religion itself is bad.

And people are still calling for prayer for the victim’s families of the Manchester bombing.

That’s why I like to use the term ‘faitheists’ for such enablers of religious belief: because people who assume religious belief is inherently neutral can be from across the belief spectrum. The central point is that any product or conclusion from any faith-based belief – be it from some religious source to, say, belief in the efficacy of some alternative medicine – is inherently pernicious. It is pernicious .because conclusions drawn from using this method about reality is impervious to reality’s arbitration of them. That is a vice. It is a guaranteed method to fool one’s self, to confuse ignorance to be another ‘kind’ of knowledge. This is what so many faitheists simply won’t recognize – the danger of empowering Really Bad Ideas out of some misplaced and warped sense of faux-respect… confusing the method that when acted upon always produces perniciousness with the person who uses it.

The method never changes; the person who succumbs to its easy allure can, should, and ought to align their thinking method with reality; they should have some means other than belief divorced from reality to figure out what real effects on real people in real life is really produced in reality.Going along to get along, pretedning one really does respect faith-based belief, is at least as bad – as pernicious – as committing one’s self to act on these ungrounded beliefs. It’s the secular version of apologetics.

UnkleE causes enough of a shit show for me to avoid that blog. I get what Tildeb is saying about people who aren’t religious, but try to find that Pollyanna perspective of religion itself. Those are the same ones who call themselves atheists but talk about Jesus like he’s the shit. I’m like “if that’s the case, why the hell did you deconvert from Christianity?” I REFUSE to romanticize any god, religion or Jesus. I figured I did enough of that for four decades. At some point we have to grow up and understand that humans are responsible for the human condition, not a god or savior and not satan. Again, I really learned some valuable things watching “The Keepers”. And still, people defend catholicism, god and faith, even on the series social media outlets.